Biophysical Society Bulletin | March 2023

Public Affairs

Talent Pipeline in Science, Technology, Innovation, and Economy (STIE): Perspectives fromMalaysia

Looking back, I am grateful that I had the chance to study abroad. I went to Pennsylvania State University for my undergraduate degree. There I had knowledgeable instructors, practical experience on every biotech experiment, and resources to finish my studies— a library section that was open 24 hours, a writing center, and an international student center that organized local hosts to interact with international students for

The science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) ecosystem in Malaysia has changed in the past 10 years. The population of Malaysia as of 2022 is 32.7 million, up from 30.2 million in 2013, making it roughly one-tenth of the population of the United States. Despite the fact that more than 60% of post-secondary education graduates are women, only a fraction more than 30% transition into the workforce. Of those who are employed, almost 40% are underemployed. Malaysia has been aiming for a 60/40 pool of science and technology/arts students and graduates, something that will hopefully translate into the labor force as well. In reality, the ratio has never been achieved and is in fact going in the opposite direction. So, what happened? When we try to compare the state of the STEM pipeline from education to employment, Malaysia is doing rather “better” in the ratio (but not numbers) of STEM graduates in comparison to other high-tech, economically strong nations. From the 2019 OECD and 2020 Singapore Census data, the percent age of post-secondary education graduates in STEM is 35% in Germany, 25% in the United States, and 39% in Singapore. Meanwhile, China produces 4.7 million post-secondary STEM graduates per year and is projected to produce 77,179 STEM PhD graduates in 2025—double that of the United States. It begs the question: does quantity reflect quality with STEM graduates? Are these graduates mostly domestic-born or for eign nationals that can sustain the STIE needs of the country? Are STEM employment opportunities available equally across all sub-sets and can they be retained in STIE public and pri vate sectors? For example, can life sciences graduates easily land a job or change jobs for better pay like engineering grad uates? Is Malaysia’s supply of STEM graduates, as stipulated in one’s national economic agenda, reflected in the nation’s effort to build a comprehensive STIE ecosystem? In 2016, the Economic Planning Unit of Malaysia reported that top STIE pace-setters are IT services, electrical and electronics, and petrochemicals. Unfortunately, among the laggard innovation-led sectors in Malaysia are agriculture and health services, and that’s where biotechnology, nanomed icine, and biophysics fall. We can imagine the domino effect this has to the affiliated industries, graduates, prospects, and the state of education itself for health and life sciences in Malaysia.

Siti Ngalim

cultural and language exchange. Fast forward to now. I can appreciate that the high tuition fees I paid enabled more resources and services for the best student experience. I also learned about American culture, which is very different from Asian culture and something I value strongly. Currently, I am a senior lecturer (comparable to an assis tant professor in the United States) at a research institute in Malaysia. Sometime last year, I was speaking with three interns who were from the top five research universities in Malaysia: two were doing a major in microbiology and another in biotechnology. We were discussing the practical skills they had. To my surprise, they told me they did not have experi ence performing transfection, running gel electrophoresis, or doing polymerase chain reaction. These students had lectures on the topics, but only one had the chance to perform a demo in front of the class. These three were in the final semester of their undergraduate studies. I was shocked, thinking how are they going to cope at any research-intensive workplace in the near future? When I asked how much their tuition fees were per semester, they said it was around RM800–900 (Malay sian ringgit) per semester—approximately US$180–210. Tu ition fees can’t cover the cost of experiments for one student, let alone basic equipment in the lab for teaching. Yet, Malaysia has the aspiration to be a high-income economy by 2025 and to be a member of the Organisation for Econom ic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Although the vision of the nation is there, the education and workforce pipeline are not. For this, we need to learn from the top global high tech nations like China, Germany, the United States, and our neighboring country Singapore. We should focus on how they rose from their economic and historical challenges and apply those lessons to improving how Malaysia can excel in science, technology, innovation, and economy (STIE) sectors and compete with economically strong nations.

March 2023

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